Web Technology Trends for 2008 and Beyond

This is a great presentation of some of the key developments that have already arrived or are on the horizon. It's clear that they will have an impact on the online travel industry, with search being one area in particular where innovation will happen based on what's called the semantic, or intelligent web. Another area will be recommendation systems where things are moving ahead with improved results noticeable to users.

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Yahoo Search Casts Lots with Semantic Web Technology

reports MarketingVOX. This is further proof of improved search becoming a reality in the not too distant future and here's a quote relevant to travel

For example, instead of searching for hotels in Miami and having to sift through results that include hotels, travel vendors and hotel deals, one could query for Miami hotels that allow pets, are five minutes from the beach and cost no more than $150 per night.

It will be interesting to observe how the travel meta-search companies will react to the major searchers offering more relevant results.

Cluetrain at 10

Unfortunately I missed this event but Josh Benoff of Forrester summarized some of key comments of Doc Searls which I quote below:

1. Advertising as we know it will die.

2. Herding people into walled gardens and guessing about what makes them "social" will seem as absurd as it actually is. (Facebook is his example.)

3. We will realize that the most important producers are what we used to call consumers. (Yup.)

4. The value chain will be replaced by the value constellation. (Many connections.)

5. "What's your business model?" will no longer be asked of everything. (What's the business model for your kids?)

6. We will make money by maximizing "because effects". ("Because effects" are what happen when you make more money because of something than with it.) E.g. search and blogging.

8. We will be able to manage vendors at least as well as they manage us. (Agreements between companies and customers shouldn't be skewed in favor of the companies.) At Harvard Law they call this VRM -- vendor relationship management -- which is what Searls is working on (projectvrm.org).

10. We'll marry the live web to the value constellation. (The Live Web isn't just about stars. Relationships of anybody to anybody.)

All this might not be readily accepted by marketers today, but let's remember that most of what the authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto loudly proclaimed ten years ago about how the web will change consumer behavior and marketing has come to pass. My take is that he's right again.

There will be a web 4.0

and I think you'll read about it here first. This is a great video giving an exciting glimpse at what's coming down the line on the web by Nova Spivak of Radar Networks who are about to introduce Twine It explains in clear terms about the semantic web and ultimately artificial intelligence (AI) with a reference to travel somewhere in the second half. I tend to agree that it will take much more than some incremental technology to offer the ultimate online travel buying experience.


Nova Spivack - Semantic Web Talk from Nicolas Cynober on Vimeo.

It's about more than just about ads

despite the title of this great article The Coming Ad Revolution by Esther Dyson on WSJ.com. This web visionary since day one still has a great grasp of what lies ahead and very likely will be correct in her prediction.

Her article contains important travel related comments that caught my attention. This one is especially revealing, as it deals with ad effectiveness and personalization and how things need to change to make the web a more effective tool than it is today:

I'm far more likely to respond to BA or NetJets within a trusted site, and for a specific offer, than I am to heed their ad while reading a newspaper article on the troubles in Russia. (As for Orbitz, my old standby: After five years, it still doesn't acknowledge my preferred airlines.)

As with past developments, this again shows how travel will be impacted by what is introduced on the web.

 

 

Why did anyone expect otherwise

This post Will Social Networking Ever = Money? asks a question that to me is surprising. To compare the potential of social networking sites to generate ad revenue to that of Google just doesn't work. The reasons are obvious, the mindset of people using at different times using the web for a different purpose. This is especially true in today's age of permission marketing and the conversations going on.

Ads on social networking sites are interruption marketing which has been called dead since at least 1999 by the likes of Seth Godin who was one of the first to point out this important fact. So, will there be money in social networking? Probably yes, but not on the scale of the money to be made on search.

The Google Blog on Yahoo

BoomTown Decodes It, So You Don’t Have To! a follow up to my last post. Parsing Google's response trying hard to play David to the perceived new Goliath! Believable? Hardly. Stay tuned as this unfolds, or should I say, drags on and on and on.....